Technology

At the beginning of the year you may have seen my blog series on the tech trends; at the beginning of each year what I like to do is research and evaluate what I think will trend in the world of technology in the coming year technology, not only in the world of consumers, but in the promotional world also. After completing my research, I then combine my findings with the knowledge and judgement from the viewpoint of a self-proclaimed ‘techie’ (aka myself), and then from this derives my top 5 trends. Now we have reached August, with over half the year over, we can revisit just how influential those technology trends have been so far…

USB Type C

With one of the biggest smartphone companies releasing their flagship device with USB Type C charger in April, it is safe to say USB Type C is definitely here to stay. Other large smartphone manufacturers have either already made the transition or will make the transition with their next release. More and more people are learning about USB Type C and its benefits and could easily reach mainstream adoption by the end of the year. We are also seeing an influx of USB Type C products in the promotional merchandise industry too, from multi charging cables that include USB Type C, to Type C only flash drives and Powerbanks.

It was interesting to see after the excitement of VR goggles and 360 video from the early adopters, how popular it may have become. The buzz around virtual reality, although not as prominent, still exists, I would say, although it hasn’t quite reached main stream adoption, it is slowly but surely on the right track. In the same manner as marketing, the important element is content… when it comes to 360 video, this is not a fast process, like all great things, it will take time. One element that has sped up this process is the fact that many large technology companies, famed for their smartphones are also creating and selling 360 degree cameras. Whether they are bought stand alone, or as an accessory with new phones, these 360 cameras are providing people with the technology to speedily create the said content we mentioned earlier. A great example of this gaining traction is the fact that you can now upload and view 360 video on the biggest social network in the world. We have also seen 360 video used in experiential marketing for movies, with one of our staff given, a promotional viewer in association with a new movie release. It is this area of 360 video where the promotional product industry will definitely benefit, VR viewers are not only popular on the promotional market, but they are also becoming more and more affordable.

Earlier this week across the UK the retro styled Nokia 3310 went on sale in mobile phone shops across the country with demand for the device being called astonishing. The original 3310 was released 17 years ago, selling over 100 million devices becoming a cult classic for the ages. The biggest gripe with smartphones today is battery life, something that the 3310 had no issues with previously holding up to two weeks battery life, this is something that has been reintroduced into the new style 3310 which gives you 22 hours of talk time. The new phone isn’t for everyone, and is lacking many smartphone functionalities, but for those only after a phone to make calls and send text messages, this would be the phone for you.

As with everything, when there is a trend on the consumer market, it generally makes its way across to the promotional market too. We are seeing more and more customers asking for retro styled items, from confectionary to fashion and yes technology also. A great example you can see here is a retro Bluetooth speaker, in the style of a nostalgic FM radio this speaker gives you’re your flashback nostalgia with Bluetooth connectivity. This is a concept we have already started seeing and will see more of, modern day technology in retro styling.

If you haven’t heard about the internet of things, it simply is a new age network being created, not between people, but between objects, how they output and share information to devices, and even to the larger World Wide Web. Smarter technology is definitely a concept that is more understandable after an example as the possibilities of future applications are pretty much endless. The example I will be giving is that from the point of view of an attendee, experiencing smarter technology being integrated into attended conference.

You sign up to attend a technology related conference, 2 weeks prior to the event you receive an automated e-mail asking what time you’ll be arriving, dietary requirements and car licence plate details. 3 days before the event you will receive in the post to your preferred address your conference event name badge and lanyard, with built in RFID access to building, restricted to the hours of the conference.

On day of conference your phone has already detected from the information sent to your phone that you have to leave at 7:30am as the conference is an hour away and there is half an hour of traffic, once you attend, you gain automatic entry to the carpark, as the security system auto reads your licence plate on authorised list, and gain easy access into building by scanning the, RFID in-built, name tag on reader to open door. As you walk through the doors you receive location based notification to your phone asking if you would like to download the conference app, which has details of the itinerary and app also is required for augmented reality aspect of conference.

The time for the conference has begun and automatically the lighting in the conference room dims and the AV system is ready for the first speaker. During the conference a person asks a question requiring a specific numerical answer, for example “what percentage of smart phone sales were android OS last year” rather than the speaker finding the details, the conference rooms auto assistant has already found the answer and delivers this through text to speech software.

After the conference is over, the next day you will receive an automated e-mail from the conference intelligence hub containing the filmed videos that were automatically created and uploaded of the seminars, these videos will also be sent to those who couldn’t attend for any reason.

Hopefully by combining the knowledge of the ‘Internet of Things’ explained in the last white paper, and with this example, you have a abundant knowledge of how smarter technology can work in the conference environment, and even see and theorise other applications of how it could work in the future. The introduction of Amazon Echo into the consumer market really has kick-started the demand for an always connected smart assistant, in the home and in the workplace. If these assistants can be branded and customised on a software and external level, they would make a fantastic addition to any promotional campaign and conference.

Back in 1994 an artist called Julie Martin conceptualised and brought to stage the world’s first augmented reality dance production called “dancing in cyberspace.” During the production the dancers would dance and interact with full life sized virtual objects. From the viewers perspective the dancers were fully immersed in the virtual environment, creating a full augmented experience.

When it comes to conferences, not too dissimilar to theatre performances, there is a stage or a viewing platform where the audience’s attention is centralised around, and a budding audience that needs to have their attention retained for the entirety of the performance, for anyone that’s ever been to a conference or seminar, where the topic is somewhat mundane, not to the fault of the speaker, it can be difficult retaining the attention of the crowd. This situation worsened with the introduction of smartphones, people either checking their e-mails, WhatsApp, snapchat etc.

Bringing Augmented Reality into the world of conferences can really change this; augmented reality brings flat images and ideas to life through the use of an overlaying device. In the same way that virtual reality can transport you to another place, augmented reality can transport things to you! Back to the Mount Everest example, using augmented reality you can show the audience an obviously scaled down 3d rendering of Mount Everest with a computer animation of the path you took, you can also compare the size of Everest with other real world examples, which just wouldn’t be possible to imagine without visual representation. Now this is all great in theory, but what about execution? Remember those VR headsets we distributed in the 360 video topic? These can double up as augmented reality headsets as long as the VR viewer has a camera panel, (which most do!)

If you have already paid enough for Augmented Reality content and do have budget for, or simply do not want to distribute VR headsets, there is a solution for this too! Almost everyone at that conference will already have a tool that can view augmented reality, yes that pesky smartphone that previously at conferences would provide a distraction, can be turned on its head and be used as the viewing tool for AR devices. All you need to do is distribute material with an AR trigger built into an image, when the person aims their smart device at the image, with the correct app loaded up, they will see a live rendering of whatever you want the image to trigger, this could be a video, or a 3d rendered model, if you’d like to know more about augmented reality, check out my previous blog series! What we have seen done in the past, is for companies to incorporate an augmented reality strategy, with their promotional product strategy essentially fulfilling too needs with one deed, you are getting your brand awareness by printing your imagery on a product, but at the same time, that imagery would contain triggers that would work in the world of augmented reality.

The conference and meeting partition of the events sector is worth a whopping 19.9 billion pounds in the UK alone, with conferences and meetings being held constantly up and down the country. One of the bonuses of having a company in and around London is that London is the number one city for in terms of meetings and events activity in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). The average conference in the UK has 258 delegates, now again this would be great if everyone had companies in and around London, with London being the hub, but chances are there will be companies wanting to send delegates from all over the country, and EMEA, depending on the conference. The problem is some companies especially SME’s may not have the resources to send staff to a conference, regardless of how much they would benefit from attending.

Many conferences with try to accommodate for those who cannot attend by recording the seminars and hosting and sending them to the absentees, but even still many people receive the seminar videos, with full intention of watching them, but just never get round too it, which is why working in real time is so important. This is where 360 degree video comes into the picture, as described in my last blog series “a video recording where an omnidirectional camera records in every direction at the same time. During playback the viewer is fully immersed in the spot the recording was made, the panoramic feature allows you to scroll around to see the surroundings, or using a VR headset with a gyroscopic sensor the viewer turns their head to look around them, seeing the whole environment exactly as it was recorded.”

Now envisage this in the conference environment, not only would it be great for speakers that use the whole of the stage, but imagine being able to look around using a VR viewer and seeing everyone’s reactions as the seminar proceeds, providing you with a fully immersed experience. You could implement this in several different ways, you can either record the whole seminar in 360 degree video, sending absentees the link, or you could live stream the event in 360 degree format, this way people will be able to attend from across the world in real-time and not miss buzz of finding out information as it is released.

360 Video does not simply have to be a communication tool; it can also be used in the same way videos are used, as support material for presentations. Many conference speakers like to include a life experience anecdote in their seminars, whether it’s scaling Everest or exploring the Serengeti, just for a moment imagine how good it would be to experience those moments with the speaker, if everyone in the room was given a VR viewer, the could first person see the experience of being in the Serengeti or Everest, just without all the negatives of being really cold and the 38.5 mile dangerous trek to base camp. When it comes to giving promotional items at conferences, conference folders are generally top of the list, they are useful and relevant to the event, but that’s not stopping you from adding VR Viewers. As a matter of fact in our range we have a VR viewer with all over print (fantastic for branding) that is flat packed perfect to fit in a conference folder!

Bringing your Conference into the 21st Century, Episode 1: USB Type C

Hopefully you would have seen my top 5 technological Trends that I think will be popular this year. Now when I say this year, I mean they will begin to gain mainstream attention and will continue on to change the world we live in, our daily routines, health and fitness, hobbies and habits, the way we work and yes even the way our conferences and exhibitions work. When it comes to conferences and exhbitions I have identified four of these five trends that would work perfectly in the conference and events world, splicing this with some promotional product ideals creates new and innovative ways of bringing yesterday’s exhibitions and conferences into the world of tomorrow.

USB Type C

We’ve seen it all before, a speaker turns up to give his speech at a conference and doesn’t have the right cables, or is having issues with the over complicated AV system, where possible scenarios involve the sound working without video support or the video is working but is in black and white or at the wrong aspect ratio, I have even been to some conference centres which only use an S-Video input, I mean… who even uses S-Video anymore?? Then the AV team need to rifle through their bag of connections and dongles, realise you only have a HDMI input on your laptop but their connector only changes it from S-Video to VGA, ah yes but now we have another connector which changes VGA to DVI, still not quite 

their so let’s add on another connector to change DVI to HDMI and by the time you get there, the video quality isn’t great and quite frankly now your visual support aid has become a video hindrance because rather than giving your speech you’ve spent 20 minutes out of your 45 minute allotted slot sorting out the AV problems.

Now how does USB Type C instantly solve this issue, the answer is it doesn’t, well not directly and not instantly. What USB Type C WILL DO (with time) is replace the need for all other types of cables, as I explained in my previous white paper, USB Type C support not only replaces the functions of current USB, where it is used as a plug and play connection for pc peripherals, and as power supply to portable electronic devices, but USB Type C also will support sound and visual transfer also, thus replacing all other Audio Visual cables. In the not too distant future, there is a possibility everything will be solved with one cable, a double ended USB Type C cable, and all ports will be USB Type C ports, and although we’re not saying go now and implement this into your conference room, it would not hurt to look into integrating a USB Type C port in your AV panel, if/when it needs updating.

There is another way USB Type C can help you “bring your conference into the 21^st century,” in the past when attending conferences I have received products like a folders, stationary items and USB flash drive, in my technological trends white paper there is a product that could crossover here. I mentioned a USB Flashdrive that was double ended, one end being your generic USB plug in, and the other end being a USB type C connection, this provides you with the flexibility to plug it into a great range of personal computer and mobile devices. More and more people are switching to tablets and smaller computer; the USB type C is now allowing devices to go smaller and thinner by not having to incorporate the large USB port. This is a solution that can be looked into from your next conference down to its backwards compatibility and if your USB flash drive is USB 3.0 it will transfer at faster rates also!

Now the title smarter technology seems to be a very broad term, but it’s a term that you will be hearing a lot in the next few years. Along with a new terminology will become household jargon “Internet of Things.” Now if you don’t know what this means, I will give you a very feasible example before giving you the full definition.

You’re feeling a bit stressed out as of late and feel like having a family movie night therefore you mark, in your electronic based calendar, ‘Family movie night 7pm Thursday’ this will now not only appear on all your smart devices but on all your families calendars synced devices also. Come Thursday you will find that you will have received a delivery of popcorn and sweets, at a time where someone would definitely be home, again judged by the online family schedules. When you open the package you see the snacks measured out into perfect

proportions according to families consumption habits. At approximately 6.45pm you will receive a notification from your microwave that to have your popcorn at perfect eating temperature you should insert at 6.50 for 5 minutes then cool for 5 minutes, so you don’t burn your mouth on the hot kernels. Your entertainment system has already selected according to previous watching choices of the whole family what film selection you all would like to watch, and has adjusted to your mood which it would have read from you’re wearable technology watch, all of your phones automatically switches themselves to answer machine mode and will only allow contacts marked as urgent through during the period of the film. Your lighting around the house will automatically turn everything else off, and have low cinema watching light in your viewing area.

This is just one viable example of how the internet of things potentially could work. The Internet of Things can be defined as an internetworking of physical items that can be as small as wristbands, shoes and toothbrushes, to as large as vehicles, rooms and buildings. These are embedded with electronics that can collect and share data either processed by themselves, or by a central processing unit. There are so many applications for this, the number of possibilities is limitless and with the popularity of home assistants on the rise, such as Amazon Echo and Google those central processing units can become artificially intelligent assistants.

So how is smarter technology going to make its way across into promotional products? There is already a small range of wearable technology in the promotional market, showing signs already of smarter technology making its way across. Activity wristbands connect to your phone feeding it up-to date data of steps taken and calories burnt, now app dependant this will go through processing and calculate how many calories you now need to reach your optimum weight. Another health and lifestyle related item I have seen on the promotional market, actually works perfectly as a promotional gift, is a water bottle that measure how much liquid you are drinking throughout the day, and encourages you to drink more. Now by combining this with your smart connected wearable device, telling you how many calories you’re burning, along with a smart connected weighing scale you can see the conversation these ‘Internet of Things’ can be having to improve your daily health.

These five product categories really do exhibit the fact that new technology doesn’t necessarily have to mean a completely new invention, the wheel doesn’t have to be invented over and over again, it can just be a newer and smarter version of old technology. We see this all the time, but now with the introduction of the Internet of things, we are seeing not only smarter devices, we are seeing smarter devices that talk to each other and learn from each other. With all this being said, I still look forward to the day I can add flying cars, spaceships, teleportation systems and other futuristic technology to the what’s trending list!

Technological Trends to Look Out for in 2017 Episode 4: Wireless Headphones

Wireless audio is another technology that isn’t exactly new; in fact I remember when I had my first pair of wireless headphones in the early 1990’s, they were this colossal pair of over the head headphones, that seriously looked like something from a 1980’s science fiction movie. They had big antennas sticking out of each earpiece wirelessly transmitting to a receiver dock which was plugged into the auxiliary port of my hi-fi/television dependant on which device I wanted to listen to. It seemed revolutionary at the time but the sound quality wasn’t great, the range and interference were even worse and don’t get me started on the battery life!

So what is with the resurgence of wireless headphones now? Although I don’t think you can call it the full definitive factor, but Apple’s notion to do away with the 3.5mm jack definitely put some weight behind the need for wireless audio this year. With rumours that other popular smartphone brands will also be ditching the 3.5mm jack, this only adds more fuel to the wireless fire. The reasoning behind the event many people on social media called #jackgate is that the analogue port just took up too much space with it being such old technology; it was time to fill that area with new technology.

As you can see on timeline on our website we first saw augmented reality here at BTC Group in 2013, a company approached us to see how promotional products and clothing could work with augmented reality, and it did work really well, after a few projects, everything went quiet on the AR side and we didn’t really here much about it business wise and in general media trends. I believe a lot of this was purely down to limitation, there were very few applications out there that supported AR and some weren’t very user friendly at all, not only this but finding people to create content for you was like searching for gold dust, was limited and very expensive. Fast-forward a few years and an incredibly popular mobile game is released that incorporates AR as an integral part of the game of catching pocket sized creatures, and suddenly the world see augmented reality in a whole new light. It was this initial nudge in the right direction that was definitely needed for this technology to make it to mainstream, and people are really becoming more and more interested in not only augmented reality in gaming but how AR can benefit daily routine.

So what kind of things can AR help with in the future? One humungous area AR can be beneficial is when buying product, over 180 billion pounds was spent online last year in the UK alone, many of these people not knowing what the clothing product would look like on, or what the kitchen table would look like in their house, pretty much all of this is done using guesswork. This is wear AR comes in through a device like the Microsoft HoloLens users will be able to see what the dress looks like when they are wearing it, or how a table looks in the room you want to put it and, you can also manipulate and rotate virtually without breaking a sweat!

What we will see in the promotional industry is further research and development into AR triggers, at the moment we’re seeing that using certain apps aiming the camera at imagery with triggers hidden inside is the current method to initiate AI, what would be great is for generic apps to just identify any promotional product, and add the AI element to it, for example T-Shirts with hidden slogans, or pet AI animals that are triggered by aiming the camera at promotional stuffed toys. Another great idea I’d love to see developed for the promotional product and giveaway industry is GPS triggered AR, making products at different locations trigger different things, this would add a whole new level to promotional products, making even the most affordable item more dynamic and fun.

Technological Trends to Look Out for in 2017 Episode 2: 360 Video

Now onto this week’s thoughts on Virtual Reality, specifically the use of 360 degree video.

If you’ve ready any of my previous blogs regarding VR or have seen my VR Whitepaper, you will already have some knowledge of what 360 video is, but for those who haven’t had the pleasure in doing so yet, a basic description is that it is a video recording where an omnidirectional camera records in every direction at the same time. During playback the viewer is fully immersed in the spot the recording was made, the panoramic feature allows you to scroll around to see the surroundings, or using a VR headset with a gyroscopic sensor the viewer turns their head to look around them, seeing the whole environment exactly as it was recorded.

VR viewers are becoming more and more available, but content is key! Everbody and their grandmother has been on a VR rollercoaster (producing some incredibly funny youtube videos, may I add!) but what we’re seeing more and more of is people filming events, shows even football matches in 360 degree video. One thing that helped me pick 360 video for this list was the fact that you were able to view the London 2016/17 New Year’s fireworks in 360 degrees. This wasn’t created and put out there by some start up tech-company; this was broadcasted by the BBC, which only reinforces my views on how big I think this is going to be this year, so look out for more 360 videos coming your way!

Last year in the promotional industry we saw an increased interest in ‘Google cardboard’ style headsets, these theoretically work fantastically in the promotional market because the whole item is printable, thus providing a blank canvas for branding. Whilst saying this, this year we are noticing suppliers seem to be concentrating more on the high end side of VR viewers, finding new and better ways for people to enjoy the experience in a more comfortable manner, rather than it just being a handheld device. Although these are more expensive then the cardboard option it does go to show, in the promotional industry the selection of quality over price definitely has it’s time and place, with this being one of them. 

360 Video is a fantastic concept, now if you combine this with the technology virtual reality brings, alongside the upcoming trend in the next blog, you have life changing tech at the tip of your fingers.